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About

The Center for High Assurance Computer Systems (CHACS) performs fundamental research, exploratory development, and advanced technology demonstrations necessary to develop assured systems. Activities cover a broad range of applications that include cryptographic devices and protocols, autonomic cyberspace operations, platform and weapons system resilience, mission assurance, privacy and traffic engineering, formal specification and verification, trustworthy autonomous systems, and quantum information science. 

Uniquely structured with research and engineering components, CHACS liaises with activities at NRL, Navy, DoD, US Government, and international counterparts to discover, develop, standardize, transition, and field technologically superior warfighting capabilities.

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Products 

  • Maude NPA Protocol Analyzer - The Maude-NPA Protocol Analyzer is an analysis tool for identifying weakness among cryptographic protocols.  Unlike traditional tools, Maude-NPA takes the inherent algebraic properties of many cryptosystems into account.  These properties enable high assurance verification of cryptographic protocol design, strength, and integrity.
 
  • Network Pump – The Network Pump is a Cross Domain Solution (CDS) providing network domain separation through a failsafe and redundant security architecture. It performs high assurance validation, inspection, sanitization, and/or transliteration, as required, per data flow between networks of different classification levels. 
 
  • Programmable Embeddable INFOSEC Product (PEIP) – The PEIP family of cryptographic modules support a wide array of crypto and key management functions. PEIP modules are fully key and algorithm agile and can be programmed in the field while operating.
 
  • Software Cost Reduction (SCR) Toolset - The SCR toolset helps software developers build software specifications with greater assurance that the requirements will be complete, and the resulting software error-free. It comprises an integrated suite of tools for specifying and analyzing software requirements that includes an editor for creating specifications, a consistency and completeness checker, a browser for visualizing dependencies, and a simulator. 
 
  • The Onion Routing (Tor) - Software that provides anonymous communication over a computer network.  In onion routing, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, analogous to layers of an onion.  The encrypted data is transmitted through a series of network nodes called onion routers, each of which “peels” away a single layer, uncovering the data's next destination.  When the final layer is decrypted, the message arrives at its destination.  The sender remains anonymous because each intermediary knows only the location of the immediately preceding and following nodes.